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Special Note -- scroll to bottom to see these latest entries: =============== 12-21-06 Kenneth Snelson, Todd Sila -- Art &Science about Iron Shell around the Sun & my "Sun Dance" music =================== 12-19-06 ?The Zeitgeist of 11 Spring Street =================== 11-03-06 Part 2 Jackson Pollock, Jedi Knights, George Washington & Will Smith in "I Am legend" ============ Part 1 10-23-06 about Hollywoods "I Am Legend' & "Pollocksquared" in Washington Square Park ============ 07-01-06 Just previous to those my entry about the new 2006 Coffee table book on Jackson Pollock, "Veiling The Image" by Don Wigal that includes many references & quotes about Pollocksquared & myself -- noting a link to the Amazon page which carries several reviews. ============= ============= 02-18-05 "Pollock Squared--Romance & the Gates" Did a shoot at the Christo's "Gates" in Central Park with my Pollock & a pretty young actress who today made her Pollock Squared film debut. After first steeping ourselves at length in the Metropolitan Museum's superb Eastern Art collection of Gods & Goddesses, we filmed just to the south of the Met on a wonderful hillside strung all around with Gates & concentrated on some upbeat & fun filled imaginative intertwinings which became entirely magical. I wanted to include the Gates as wonderful location & as my film is still evolving & there could surely have been no better opportunity than this. Nothing at all occurred as I imagined upon setting out, but everything developed serendipitously with a will of it's own, one thing following another forming a wonderful experience. Great numbers of passing people seemed to enjoy our various little filming episodes including our specific interactions with the Gates. We used the Gates not just as backdrops but also representing a sort of flowing timeline of differing years as Pollock Squared in fact covers the past entire century. It was intensely cold, but the sun was bright and there were delightful clouds & the two hawks Pale Male & Lola were sighted. Then quite suddenly brisk winds arose to activate the saffron fabric bringing the Gates to life--as opposed to laying there as has been on some other days. When the sun was on the blowing fabric at the proper angle, it made them glow brightly with an almost transcendent, marvelous yellow/orange intensity & it was then they became spectacular & which I was able to capture a good deal of with my camera. The sheer quantity of so many thousands of Gates everywhere throughout Central Park was staggering/unbelievable--enough to defy the imagination. Today was altogether an unforgettable experience despite some minor Gate nay saying reported in the media. The crowds I witnessed judging by expressions on their faces (and my own) certainly found it to be an exhilarating & uplifting experience. With the Christos already in my film saying nice thing about my vision, the Gates have proved to be a double plus. Bill Rabinovitch rabinart@aol.com ================= 03-10-05 Also the following seems to have impacted on many people's lives in SOHO during the last week & so I am including my write up of what's happened up through today. A Michael Heizer sized colossal Sci-fi Hole in my backyard & my filming of it in relation to modern man. To the rear of my apartment above Canal Street in downtown Manhattan, the city in a surprise move suddenly took over the local asphalt Edison parking lot last week & overnight it's all become almost a science fictionish construction site. The huge changes that have occured in the last few days are extraordinary. They are going to drill an immense hole 20 feet in diameter about a thousand feet down into granite which will take several years to complete using massive high tech machinery which they say will all eventually tie into the vast NY subterranean water system project that been in process for more than twenty years. Google: water tunnel # 3 It's all to carry water from upstate replacing our antiquated system & described as the world's biggest engineering project. Anyway that's their story, or perhaps cover story but it's quite dramatic to witness from so closely. The granite laying beneath is actually part of two ajoining mountains under Manhattan which is the reason huge skyscrapers are able to build here as I beams are needed to be driven into them in order to support the buildings immense weights. This project I'm told is beyond anything penetrating so deeply into Manhattan & of course I'm therefore taking the time to video document things from my bird's eye view. Plumbing the unconscious? Early in my career before becoming an artist while working in industry I was involved in a project to drill an even immensely deeper hole many miles deep called Project MOHO. it was a feat that proved too technologically daunting for the time & was canceled by congress & I believe never resurrected & even today these depths remain completely out of reach. A few days ago the gigantic drill project continued until a small part broke under a tremendous impact just as I was actually zoomed in recording events from my place about a hundred feet away. This stopped the entire project until the next day. A neighborhood bird that winters nearby later sang out after it stopped. I have the perfect vantage point looking down from above & to the side & can peer directly into the very heart of the initial drillings of the main activity. It took several days to assemble the gigantic yellow Japanese drilling machine. Trenches & holes were meanwhile being dug all around at the perimeters of adjoining buildings. A large mobile crane & a back hoe were swinging around rendering balletic assistance to the Queen Bee drilling machine. Everything momentarily looked peaceful in the fresh snow last week but peace & snow were gone in a flash. Vertical grey silo's 30 feet high are now standing in the corner next to a major generator. The giant machine itself looks almost like a few massive tanks stuck together with crazy glue & with a huge cylindrical crane more than a yard in diameter which was assembled on site & now attached vertically at over a hundred feet with further suporting columns. Everything is painted a clear yellow, proving refreshing after Christo's saffron. The machine was made in Japan with all sorts of embedded computers & specialized hydraulics & worthy of a Godzilla movie. Part crane & part tank gives only a very limited sense of it. There are many massive box like protuberances of vast tonnage & it's all a far more complex operation than anything I've seen before; sort of like a strange sculptural assemblage. There's even a full second story high walkway around the rear of it. It's extremely powerful & noisy & will be in operation for two years. In operation it's all twisting & grinding & renting & rotating & delivering tremendous impacts & fumes. it's also shaking & rumbling & spewing floods of turbulent waters & there's much smoke eminating from deep pools from all the cutting force & water used for lubrication, with three huge spinning drill heads simultaneously making holes for 44 foot I beams as it steadily continues bursting its way through the rocks & dirt, to say nothing of all the machine engines running together. It now seems to me they are first going to make a building to surround the gigantic hole which will later follow it. A few days ago three military helicopters in formation hovered directly over it for a long while, perhaps a half hour, so I went out to video them from street level. I also videoed one of the main workers making an astonishingly complex large origami bird while taking his lunch break. At the intesecting corner of the lot has been for several years one of these very tall three sided free standing steel advertising billboards still remaining. It happens to be currently advertising very classy shiny black "Infiniti" automobiles in a very high tech clever advertising campaign on all three sides with different images on each side. Strangely enough a great deal of just pure text with no images just happens to be on the side directly facing me which has also thereby been the backdrop for much of my videoing. It just so happens to be sort of a very sophisticated complex free form poem about modern man & speed & rhythm. Things lined up from my vantage point so that the words were slowly revealed as the drill worked it's way down. Anyway if I was a Hollywood director with a hundred million dollar budget I could never have outdone this reality show. Many months of massive dynamiting are soon to start 500 feet deep into the bed rock outside my window which I imagine well be spectacular. The entire project seems symbolic of very modern man and also at once Chaplin-esque. By now I have hours of footage & all speeded up as can be done on my computer & the use of time lapse & carefully edited down to perhaps twenty minutes & set to the right modern music, it should be sensational even to this point in time. Bill Rabinovitch =================== 03-26-05 "A chance encounter with Damien Hirst at Gagosian & his not wanting to die in a PollockSquared car crash" Yesterday I visited Damien Hirst's new show at Gagosian. But after taking in the show of some thirty paintings I felt a bit let down, I was still intrigued, but something seemed missing compared with the usual Hirst experience. Being a Friday afternoon with not a large crowd there was a nice sense of freedom to move around & to then more closely examine the work. The imagery was of course quite weird & spooky, a bit off setting & disturbing--certainly pluses, but not Damiens usual Barnum & Bailey edgy circus act--no aquariums with fish swimming around or giant dancing balloons. Perhaps I was expecting more than these ominous paintings, for In other years I'd videoed all of Damiens dramatic openings at Larry's. By tackling painting he's taken some new chances but as chancy as the subject matter may be, the surfaces are not truly painterly, as a real painter would like to see. Of course this may not be the point of the subject matter at all, & he obviously tried to do as well as he could, but the fact is that's where something was lost that might make them more compelling. So now I began to also focus on videoing people examining the art as they moved in very close & cropping things in such a way that I was able to make the viewers seem to become convincingly re-situated within the picture space. By eliminating the walls, things would suddenly coalesce by shutting out the extraneous. The viewers focus then led one through the camera eye into these somber Hirstian visions, by becoming temporarily part of them, & in certain moments things seemed to click for me visually & poetically. My attempt was a rather total inversion of that photo of the fashion model in front of a Pollock in which the whole idea was contrast. These mostly non gestural works with gigantic sculls, lacerated people, hypodermic impaled arms, bloody operating room paraphernalia, bloodied & awful Latin car wrecks strewn with bullet holes had continuous overtones of societal death abounding everywhere. And there were carefully done arrangements of hundreds of pills in flat spaces everywhere else. The term "Nature Muerti" began to take on new meanings. Not a happy show, the few brightly colored gem stones paintings & bunched credit cards not withstanding. Then in a moment of great synchronicity as I turned around there was Damien himself being interviewed by what turned to be a Reuter's TV crew in an almost entirely empty adjoining space. So I gradually began videoing them with Demian set up in front of this huge multi figured allegorical painting--some sort of Latin looking funerary scene. I videoed them from various angles, front & sides but not close in enough to catch the dialogue, When they finished I went up to Damien who instantly remembered me from videoing his first big NYC show when Gagosian's gallery was still in SOHO. That one in the 90's was in fact the key show that propelled him internationally. The opening was attended by many celebrities & I believe I was the main if not only one to have videoed it during which I briefly interviewed Damien, And at that time he was far more rough hewed to see. So Damien still remembered that moment as Schnabel left him to converse with me, so he was now very receptive & open with me for then documenting things. So basically we had a little fun dialogue with me filling him in about PollockSquared while I videoed him. Well, he was all intrigued & delighted by Pollock surviving the car crash. I then mentioned I might put this very moment in my film & he then said fine but at least avoid having him die in a car crash & I said I certainly wouldn't as no one dies in my version & not to worry. (Perhaps this was a bit ironic considering Damien's constant death oriented imagery?) I mentioned to him it was the last day of Ruth Kligman's show being close by at Zone, as being Pollock's car crash survivor, but he was still very busy & almost immediately off to LA, although thinking he had met Ruth in the past. So right then a very pretty young English woman from Gagosian named Zoey took the camera from me & videoed Damien & I with our arms around each other clowning around a bit further. It was all pretty positive, So I then continued videoing the show. I was applying certain artistic license, depending on the rather chancy happenstance of the moment, but several times things did come into sync & to me produced a more complex experience. Getting into the groove with the slowly changing cast of viewers at certain moments just seemed to pull things together. I do think Damien was certainly trying to convey something twistedly profound, but I personally needed to perceive them differently & found a way to do so. The guards & staff recognizing me gave me no problems as I was apparently not ruining anyone's experience. It all seemed a bit in slow motion. With Gagosian's space huge, & the numbers of people small, & the opportunity for personal reflective experience seemed once again to be authentic & real within the contemporary art world. A few times I admit pushing the envelope asking a person to slightly move to make things work better for the overall composition or have them a bit more slowly walk by certain works but 99% of the time mainly what ever happened was pretty cool all by itself, I kept far enough back so it became a great photo op for me the more I got into it. Would that enlivening moment happen? Could it? And with many of these paintings it worked. People facing front, side or inward were timelessly at one with the paintings. This at least in my mind became more fascinating visually & complemented whatever the paintings might be lacking. I've done this in the past at other galleries but yesterday the circumstances of the imagery enabled me to take things much further conceptually. At certain points people realized they were part of the subject but by my staying back, it was usually only later after I'd already caught the key moment I saw that no one minded my filming them; but perhaps not realizing just how close I was with the zoom lens. Bill Rabinovitch ================== Shark Pickler Hirst Admits He's Had Silly Ideas By Claudia Parsons NEW YORK (Reuters) - The artist best known for pickling a shark and slicing up a cow admits he's had some pretty silly ideas over the years. But Damien Hirst, the aging enfant terrible of the British art world, is optimistic that museums will still be showing at least some of his work in 200 years' time. The new exhibition -- 29 photorealist oil paintings based on photographs of hospital scenes, drug addicts, suicide bombers and his own artwork -- has been fuel for the fire for those who question whether he is an artist or a conman. Hype and controversy can only take an artist so far, he said. "You can buy drinks for all the collectors in the world and get your stuff in the (museums), but in 200 years' time if it's crap, it's not going to be there, is it?" .. "Now, if you'll excuse me I see Bill Rabinovitch over there and I much rather speak to him than you stupid gits". ===================== 09-30-05 Last month I completed a new hour DVD documentary/movie about artist James Rosenquist commissioned by him. It's entertaining & educational & covers his early life & creative evolution. I've used the latest digital techniques including 2D & 3D animations. This piece was a year in process covering a decade of James's NYC shows, openings & performances that I uniquely covered including his recent Guggenheim retrospective show. ====================== 11-01-05 Halloween 2005 with Franz Kline & PollockSquared. Barnaby took on a double role for this years wildly popular Halloween Parade, this time becoming Franz Kline -- Pollock's Ab Ex painting buddy for PollockSquared. Barnaby, this year played Franz Kline as opposed to Jackson Pollock as he did in last years parade & again painted & many times repainted a two sided 6 foot X 6 foot painting on wheels while working from side to side this year working exclusively in black & white throughout the parade route. A team assisted in towing & we had a splendid time as I recorded the evolving painting. It was all an extremely successful evening including the outcome of the painting. The Battle of Armageddon site that Flash Light & I have just finished co-authoring & are bringing to life as a new Indie film in which Barnaby Ruhe plays a fearsome & shrewd Beezebub. http://battle-of-armageddon.com/ ==================== 11-05-05 Last night videoed the latest Philip Guston opening at David McKee & interviewed family members & artists & collectors who knew him well including west coast superstar artist Wayne Thiebault. Philip Guston died long ago but is increasingly famous. Significantly he & also his friend Reuben Nakian at other times had visited my NYC studio several times at 74 Grand Street in SOHO & I'd recently done an animation of one of Guston's paintings. I also have a look a like actor painter playing Philip in my PollockSquared film. Last year his dealer David McKee had arranged a major Guston retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art which itself is a high honor. Immediately then went to the Apple store in SOHO & saw the new Sydney Pollack film premiere about Frank Gehry. It was a huge overflowing crowd & I was the only one to later video the entire Q& A with Sydney Pollack. He's a great & powerful speaker. Sydney shot much of it by his own hand holding a mini DV consumer camcorder for doing the close in stuff with Frank so as not to intimidate him, which is just how I usually work to insure the same ease of experience. Anyway I likely can combine parts of what I shot with the hour I shot at the NYC Guggenheim press opening of Frank Gehry's retrospective some recent years ago as I walked the ramp videoing the various maquettes very close up. http://www.nycfcug.org/news/news.php?id=25& My further coverage of Philip Guston Opening & director Sydney Pollack about his Frank Gehry film 11-26-05 ================ 06-09-06 Please see the revised Directors page for a overview description of my 16 year video archive of the best openings of the NYC art world. Over the past year I've documented about fifty new additions to my overall twenty year video archive of the NYC art world but not listing them here as this site is primarily about my Pollock film. I've recently written up a few which proved to be popular & that are now Blogged on the Saatchi web site. Here are a few links: http://blogon.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/drupal/?q=node/428 Last night's Action Painting Battle -- Japan in NYC's Tribeca Youtube has a 6 minute video I created about this event that more than a thousand people have watched. Here's the direct link. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=choiRu5Uh3Q Report of the uptown Apple Glass Cube opening in NYC 05-19-06. http://blogon.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/drupal/?q=node/306 My essay stressing the cultural implications of Apple's massive 5th Avenue uptown opening attended by tens of thousands became quite popular reading & was linked to several web sites & mentioned in magazines. My art: http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/yourgallery/artist/details.php?id=774 =============== 07-01-06 "Veiling the Image" overarching new Pollock book & my film -- Bill Rabinovitch Last night found a brand new coffee table Pollock book that came out a few weeks ago. The author Don Wigal contacted me last year & wanted to include something about my Indie film PollockSquared -- even though he knew it wasn't finished & we've since had a correspondence. I imagined if I were very very lucky my www.PollockSquared.com indie feature might finally get a little mention in what I imagined to be a quite modest small book -- & would have been grateful as it's been such passionate difficult struggle to complete. I was astonished to otherwise see this really thick magnificent coffee table book called "Veiling the Image" by Don Wigal by Parkstone Press almost the size of MoMA's Pollock catalogue. It has a dust jacket and very fine paper. Beneath the dust jacket the cover image is again reproduced on the book which is very cool. It's all incredibly attractive, very heavily researched & neither slick nor off putting, nor filled with art world jargon, with very high production values throughout & far & away I believe the finest book on Jackson Pollock ever. He's treated Pollocksquared & myself & the Harris film very positively in vignettes splattered throughout the book. "Veiling the Image" examines Pollock's deep past & impact from every conceivable vantage point as well as various other artists, writers & even scientists. Wigal goes on to update developments through 2005 in a variety of fresh & imaginative ways I've never seen explored before. There are tons of large Pollock color reproductions -- the best I've ever seen & many I'd never seen before. There are no PollockSquared images but there may be in some non english editions. Here's the direct Amazon link where I also wrote a book review which will appear shortly. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1859959555/sr=8-1/qid=1151860790/ref=sr_1_1/102-0082731-3970504?ie=UTF8 It's likely unprecedented in this type of serious art book to have said as he does on Page 10 -- that with the use of poetic license my Pollocksquared film is able to reach deeper more important truths rarely touched on by facts alone. On Pages 63 & 66 there's a detailed description about our Blue Poles shoot & various cast of characters & philosophy. He also gives PollockSquared the final paragraph in the main text before the appendix. In the introductory acknowledgments he also credits me as an artist. Ruth Kligman is of course treated very well and throughout the book. I'd initially filled in Don about her contact info. He also speaks of the Ed Harris Pollock film in very complementary ways but gives Pollocksquared as much space in total -- so I was stunned as this was totally beyond what I imagined or expected. This piece also appears on the Saatchi Blog. http://blogon.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/drupal/?q=node/1227 ================ 10-23-06 Part 1 New PollockSquared DADA scene at Washington Square Park & Hollywood's possible "I Am Legend" take on it -- plus recent images & thoughts on my brand new music compositions. On 10-18-06 I attended a NYU panel about early Phantasmagoria of the 18th & 19 th century about a time very much preoccupied with dramatically depicting death but done in technologically clever ways & performed in theatrical settings. This popular & elaborate entertainment seemed a major creative endeavor & contributed to many techniques that the later silent films & our contemporary films would evolve from. (This all ties into the current “Moving Pictures: American Art and Early Film, 1880-1910” at NYU's Grey Art Gallery, thru December 9, 2006). During the talk some startling mirroring of "real" events was unfolding around the corner in nearby Washington Square Park -- so after the talk I wandered over to watch -- where a Hollywood scene being made was coincidentally touching on many of the panels themes. Maybe I'm a bit obsessing here, but as artist/filmmaker here's the story as related to my own Pollock film. Hollywood had taken over the entire park for an all night $1M blockbuster scene for a new version of a vampire film starring Will Smith in a Si-Fi remake called "I AM LEGEND" with Will Smith playing the last living man on earth -- with only Vampires otherwise remaining, due to some global biological virus run amuck. Apparently this new version is now set in NYC as opposed to Australia, as in previous filmed versions noted on Wikipedia --BUT -- little did I earlier suspect that my own filmmaking may have a bit influenced the direction of the scene last night -- as things might seem to suggest. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Legend A moonlike gigantic balloon was attached to a condor crane impressively lit from within to great effect & occasionally moving around. But then far stranger-- & most improbably -- were perhaps a hundred extras dressed from top of head to toe in seamless white spandex who were the real focus of things. At the cry of "Action!" they would run in a great trailing line each emitting smoke directly toward the big arch from the center of the park... and sadly me this time without my video camera. I figured the highly contrasting white figures would later undoubtedly composited by special FX into more Vampire like looking creatures. This was quite cool done on a Hollywood scale -- but right then an unsettling Deja vue moment of awareness occurred for me -- because on August 11 a few months earlier, I was also then in the park videoing a group of performances kicking off the popular downtown Fringe festival -- when I noticed a dozen quite theatrically made up aesthetes of men & women standing near by just watching things. They were very elaborately dressed in new black victorian costumes with white makeup on their faces & all wearing spotless white gloves. When I approached & asked if they might be willing to do a scene for my Indie Jackson Pollock movie they were all Mime silent, speaking only in gestures through a Fringe Festival translator -- I then explained I was now inspired to re-enact a new & final scene for my own Indie Jackson Pollock film of a famous, early DADA film I'd just seen at MoMA's DADA show a few weeks earlier that I'd been ruminating over & might even merge the two -- as the highly imaginative chasing death scene seemed quite powerful... & for me somehow related to the Pollock myth of my film. In the very early MoMA DADA film, Picabia, Duchamp & an elderly Eric Satie were the main actors in the introductory scenes. It was after Picabia's shooting someone who kept annoying him, that a whole group of dark suited Parisians lyrically enacted a DADA inspired funerary scene by loping along at ever increasing speed after a horse drawn hearse going from a Paris church all the way out to a country cemetery. I had filmed this silent film from very close in at a special MOMA theater screening accompanied by a live piano duo from MIT near the screen. The theatrical company from Chicago who had all just collectively travelled here on a communal bus -- after some gesticulation agreed to do a single take for me right then. So I immediately directed just how I wanted them to run to the arch with a few instructions I first acted out, & then immediately filmed them doing it very well & moving with them. Attached are 2 examples of my own current musical compositions, one a brief mp3 (40 second extract) for Pollocksquared & both can be opened in Quicktime -- & a few new types of images & an animation still frame. I've just composed "DADA Run"to accompany my own DADA inspired scene mentioned above. In my mind the new century requires a more deeply intuitive, layered, & direct musical approach -- to get to a new place reflecting our increasingly complex world, (& perhaps leaving minimalism & post modernism no longer relevant). (if you want me to send these to you please Email me) In a most unexpected personal creative development I've this year broken into the field of original musical composition ... creating & completing some two hundred pieces -- that are sophisticated & complex in mostly classical but also jazz modes -- a few parts which will be incorporated within the film. Aided by my Apple computer & an array of programs these seem to possess a sort of compelling freshness, depth & a new sort of energy & as creative or more so than anything I've ever done in painting. Believe they break as many contemporary aesthetic barriers as the film itself & will achieve some recognition on their own. Perhaps a fantasy -- my feeling I may have contributed to the "I Am Legend" scene, but one can hardly use the word compulsion to imagine so on my part -- as they used precisely my idea, exactly the same path I'd chosen & even the scene's same starting and ending points. Likely someone from their film watched when I was filming & thought to imitate it on a larger scale with a cast of a hundred instead of a dozen. Anyway, all this really isn't about whether Hollywood did/didn't co-opt anything, but makes the larger point that it often takes risky moves on the part of artists to move things along. The exchanging of inspiration from any era, past, present or imagined future shows how artists & filmmakers can constantly influence each other in creating their own unique visions. Bill Rabinovtch rabinart@aol.com ====================11-03-06 Jackson Pollock, Jedi Knights, George Washington & Will Smith in "I Am legend"-- Part 2-- Bill Rabinovitch On the night of 10-30-06 I returned to video the last night of the Hollywood's "I AM Legend" Will Smith film being made in Washington Square Park looking for a tie in for my Pollock film. But surprise -- not only was Hollywood there but also an independent group of several dozen Jedi Star Wars knights practicing with sophisticated Light Sabers near the fountain as well. I videoed them for about an hour doing a wide variety of mock battle scenes as I moved all around them -- sometimes from very close in. Their leader Flynn who originally organized the group later gave me a written release to do a film about them -- which I felt could be quite fun & inspiring. They sometimes played for my camera so it soon became quite real from my viewpoint & they many times in various ways inventively rose to the occasion. At one later point all the lights in the park went out adding to the sense of drama with swirls of lit sabers becoming visually stunning. I also used infrared for some of the dark scenes which enabled me to see everything quite clearly. At one point they later lined up and sang the first few lines of one of the Starwar themes all together. Priceless!!! To me this was super cool -- both men, women all doing very elaborately choreographed moves in groups, practicing & working things out in elegant ways with different colored sabers. I spend some time with them & the very next night on Halloween again videoed them performing together within NYC's huge Halloween parade -- as I swirled around them on the parade route battling each other -- but now in full costume & playing to a vast public & national television. They were stunning & dramatically played things to the hilt including appropriate electronic sounds. As far as I know believe I was the only one to work with them close in to capture things cinematically. It was all Indeed quite satisfying to see. I've other footage in perfect Star Wars military troopers armor shot close in as they moved & posed for me & of course a few excellent Darth Vader's. Without exaggeration when properly combined with a bit of a narrative I likely have as powerful footage as George Lucas. To integrate all this I merely need to add a bit of CGI -- plus invent an audio track & do a version of the receding text opening of Star Wars related to today. Being an editor on Apple's Final Cut Pro besides director & conversant with dozens of 2D & 3D computer animation programs -- this is all doable for me. Now back to "I Am Legend". --- I'd returned to the park that night to take some footage wrapping up Hollywoods three week shoot there. See my previous entry about some of that. This last night was filmed on the street just north of the park's famous arch where everything was impressively lit with hundreds of special lights. This last night was without actors but mostly about filming badly decayed cars moving about & the general street scenes -- after most everyone else on earth was either dead or turned into virus infected vampires -- actually quite tremendous cinematic stuff which I shot from very close in. There's no reason I can't integrate a bit of this as there were no actors in any of these scenes. I did however take care to shoot the Jedi warriors from within the park against some of this backdrop of the arch itself -- which will add to the integrated effect. There was an extremely high brilliant light of thousands of watts lighting up the entire north area of the park erected on a giant crane for the film. On the north street side of the Arch itself there's an attached giant statue of George Washington perhaps three times life size. I visually lined things up in such a way so that Washington's profile was extremely halated by that several hundred foot high movie light which I visually hid behind him. To me it said something about truth & what President Washington stood for in our country. Jackson Pollock, Jedi Knights, George Washington & Will Smith in "I Am legend"-- Hero's all -- with a sense of idealism. If I were to add a bit of this to my Pollock Film or perhaps to another film I'm working on -- why not? Bill Rabinovitch rabinart@aol.com ========================================= 12-19-06 ?The Zeitgeist of 11 Spring Street-- Bill Rabinovitch ??On the web in the NYT's last week there was a quite interesting article with a few images I noted about an upcoming special 3 day art show being held throughout a five story building, previously a stable, in Nolita off SOHO at 11 Spring Street. ??http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/14/arts/design/14g [...] ??Last night was the evening before the opening & I managed by dint of my special artist credentials to gain entry. It turned out to be an exclusive opportunity for me to video & candidly interview the many artists who were working alone & collaboratively to complete their pieces -- many done directly on the walls after weeks of work -- before the massive public deluge & official opening today. This proved to be unlike the Chelsea experience but instead a unique global grass roots effort of art making that far exceeded the expectations of everyone, artists & public alike. Most of the inside pieces were very large, elaborate, individually inventive & edgy -- unlike the wildly merged constantly changing total graffiti effect outside of the building. Graffiti was a constant motif but things went far beyond that in terms of experimental media & fresh visions. You had to see it! ??The crowds attending over the next few days were constantly in the thousands thru Sunday's closing moments as I continued videoing inside & out. ??The works will apparently not be destroyed but incased behind sheet rock when the building is converted to luxury spaces starting next week. Sort of a future time capsule thing. Maybe some of the new co-opt owners will uncover them anyway. It was all very spontaneous with many ethnicities & many graffiti & other sorts of artists who came from Europe, South America, etc., to participate -- generally a very colorful experience. In totality it was a scene reminiscent of the 60's referring to the warmth & openness of the crowds -- extending even to those who never made it in before closing. ??I'll soon edit my several hours of footage inside & outside the building for "Youtube" -- where I imagine it will might collect an audience of thousands. E-mail me for a later direct "Youtube" link of my video. I posted this on the artists & exhibitions forum of The New York Times. http://forums.nytimes.com/top/opinion/readersopinions/forums/arts/artistsandexhibitions/index.html?page=recent Bill Rabinovitch ?rabinart@aol.com My newest in process Sci Fi feature film: ?www.Battle-of-Armageddon.com ====================================================== 12-21-06 Kenneth Snelson, Todd Sila -- Art/Science & Iron Shell around the Sun & my "Sun Dance" music Internationally famous sculptor Kenneth Snelson spoke last Friday at the Artist Talk on Art series at School of Visual Arts about the evolution of his latest sky piercing spatial sculptures that derived from his breakthrough engineering/aesthetic visions. He's currently having a joint show at the Pompidou with artist George Ricky. As a student Snelson had worked closely with Buckminster Fuller at Black Mountain College & came up with inventions Bucky co-opted. http://atoa.ws/ Kenneth's web site: www.Kennethsnelson.net After the formal presentation I had a good exchange with Kenneth -- extending the subject of the evening's dialogue further to his controversial theories of the true workings of the atom & even the human cell. Tying into his interest of atomic shells I mentioned the recent mind boggling discovery of a thin iron shell extending all around the sun existing just beneath the photosphere -- that cameras have now imaged -- putting an end to the pure gas model theory of the sun & resolving an enigma of thousands of years. http://www.thesurfaceofthesun.com/index.html Related to this a few months ago at an opening at the Ron Feldman Gallery I'd interviewed MIT artist/ professor Todd Siler explaining the atomic fusion/ plasma workings within the sun & his integrated interpretive aesthetic visions & speculative plans to similarly recreate infinite energy sources here on earth. http://www.feldmangallery.com/pages/home_frame.html As both of these exchanges were videoed I hope to present a brief "Youtube" video thinking it would make a stimulating little art/science piece especially with some amazing images & my music. The attached piece of music I did a few days ago honors the artists & celebrates the discovery of the Sun's iron shell -- perhaps also acting like a bell -- which you can hear at the end of my playful little piece entitled "Sun Dance" -- that seems somehow germane. It's quite compressed loosing some fidelity but here it is in both Mac (.mov) & PC (.rm) formats. I've taken on a new hat composing much music over the past year in both jazz & classical genres. If you want me to send you the music send me an E-mail... My own interests in science & engineering continue -- as before an artist/ filmmaker was an engineer/scientist/planner on OSO -- an orbiting solar observatory satellite & many other cutting edge space research projects for Dr. Riccardo Giacconi who in 2002 won the Nobel Prize in astrophysics for his work leading to the discovery of cosmic X-ray sources. Bill Rabinovitch rabinart@aol.com www.Pollocksquared.com see Directors page for my background My newest in process Sci Fi feature film: www.Battle-of-Armageddon.com |
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